My first memories of music are of my Dad playing piano, relaxing from his stressful job and listening to his music passion – Jazz. Artists such as Oscar Peterson, Art Tatum, Django Reinhardt & Stephane Grappelli. I loved the sound of Django on my Dad’s old record player.

Then as a teenager in the 60s, early memories of Dave Clark, The Kinks, Spencer Davis, The Beatles. Then I discovered Soul – Wilson Pickett, Sam & Dave, Otis Redding, Eddie Floyd, etc. This was more interesting!

Meanwhile I started playing guitar with my best pal Phil. We played anywhere we could, mostly in churches and youth clubs; singing and playing acoustic guitars – Simon & Garfunkel, John Denver, Johnny Cash etc.

Then I got into Cream, Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, Fleetwood Mac, etc. . . . . Hard to play that kind of stuff playing open chords on acoustics.

First gig I went to – 1969, at the Ulster Hall, Belfast – the original (Peter Green’s) Fleetwood Mac, supported by Rory Gallagher’s Taste – FANTASTIC!

Not much live music for a while, except ~1975 saw Thin Lizzy at the QUB Student’s Union. Also saw Christian Rock band Liberation Suite. That was different!

Moved to Scotland – work, family, DIY, . . . guitar gathering dust in a cupboard; eventually sold it to a friend at work. Forgot about music 🙁 . . . well it was the 80s, disco, big hair, etc.! Blues was old hat then, wasn’t it?

Fast forward to 2003, Christmas holidays – relaxing, picked up my teenage son’s guitar, how is it you play those chords again? Sore fingers. I kept at it though and by 2006 we had group of friends at our church, meeting weekly to play 60s, 70s, 80s, etc. chart hits – great fun. We played a few gigs at church socials and began to play in church from time to time.

Fast forward again to now; we have a band that plays every Sunday in church, and sometimes goes on the road to play at other churches.

Also, in the last few years I’ve played solo at a growing number of social events (see my News page). And that leads to the purpose of this website – to showcase my music and say that I am eager to play to audiences large or small.

In parallel with performing, since ~1993 I have been responsible for the sound engineering at our church, live and recordings, in-house and when we go on the road. This has greatly helped me with techniques that I use in my own recordings, see the Technical page.

So that’s it – my music heritage.